Rosabeth Moss Kanter Quotes

You've no future unless you add value, create projects.

Change masters are - literally - the right people in the right place at the right time. The right people are the ones with the ideas that move beyond the organization's established practice, ideas they can form into visions. The right places are the integrative environments that support innovation, encourage the building of coalitions and teams to support and implement visions. The right times are those moments in the flow of organizational history when it is possible to reconstruct reality on the basis on accumulated innovations to shape a more productive and successful future.

Pessimists see problems as stemming from stable and universal causes, thus making them less susceptible to corrective action. Optimists, in contrast, view problems as temporary and resulting from specific factors that will either change or be changed.

Change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us.

If networks of women are formed, they should be job related and task related rather than female-concerns related. Personal networks for sociability in the context of a work organization would tend to promote the image of women contained in the temperamental model - that companies must compensate for women's deficiencies and bring them together for support because they could not make it on their own. But job-related task forces serve the social-psychological functions while reinforcing a more positive image of women.

Innovative organizations provide the freedom to act which arouses the desire to act.

Money should never be separated from values. Detached from values it may indeed be the root of all evil. Linked effectively to social purpose it can be the root of opportunity.

Cheap labor is not going to be the way we compete in the United States. It's going to be brain power.

Power stems from 'rainmaking,' as law firms put it: the ability to bring resources into the company.

Change is a threat when done to me, but an opportunity when done by me.

A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.

I've found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences.

Business requires understanding financial matters, but management is different from running the financial aspects of the business - it requires understanding complex systems, how they operate, the nature of organisations, what happens when people interact in groups and how to motivate and guide people.

Confidence isn't optimism or pessimism, and it's not a character attribute. It's the expectation of a positive outcome.

The most radical thing we can do is connect people to one another. That starts conversations toward a vision for change.

I see the level of sophistication and knowledge about business growing dramatically. Several decades ago, only a few companies thought about international business.

You can always buy something in English, you can't always sell something in English.

Nations need to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and India's tradition of dissent and democratic debate is a positive aspect.

After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power.

Thinkers, makers and traders are the DNA of the world class company

The degree to which the opportunity to use power effectively is granted to or withheld from individuals is one operative difference between those companies which stagnate and those which innovate.

If world problems feel too big to tackle, think small. Step by step. Small wins build confidence, lead the way to change.

Some social scientists say that in-group/out-group biases are hard-wired into the human brain. Even without overt prejudice, it is cognitively convenient for people to sort items into categories and respond based on what is usually associated with those categories: a form of statistical discrimination, playing the odds.

The best way for business to move out of the Hall of Shame is to demonstrate a commitment to social causes. This also makes business sense. A focus on solving social problems has motivational benefits in lean economic times.

Leaders must pick causes they won't abandon easily, remain committed despite setbacks, and communicate their big ideas over and over again in every encounter.

The importance of discretion increases with closeness to the top of a hierarchical organization.

To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.

One of the symptoms of a losing streak is a turnover of top executives. It's a revolving door.

It is easier to talk about money
and much easier to talk about sex
than it is to talk about power. People who have it deny it; people who want it do not want to appear to hunger for it; and people who engage in its machinations do so secretly.

People are capable of more than their organizational positions ever give them the tools or the time or the opportunity to demonstrate.

Even the new feminist research on sex-role socialization and sex differences has sometimes had the unfortunate consequence of creating a new set of stereotypes about what women feel and how women behave. Despite the large amount of overlap between the sexes in most research, the tendency to label and polarize and thus to exaggerate differences remains in much reporting of data, which may, for example, report the mean scores of male and female populations but not the degree of overlap.

Confidence is the bridge connecting expectations and performance, investment and results.

People often resist change for reasons that make good sense to them, even if those reasons don't correspond to organizational goals. So it is crucial to recognize, reward, and celebrate accomplishments.

Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility.

A basic truth of management - if not of life - is that nearly everything looks like a failure in the middle.

In most important ways, leaders of the future will need the traits and capabilities of leaders throughout history: an eye for change and a steadying hand to provide both vision and reassurance that change can be mastered, a voice that articulates the will of the group and shapes it to constructive ends, and an ability to inspire by force of personality while making others feel empowered to increase and use their own abilities.

The Martha Stewart trial makes clear how far women have risen in the business world. America can be proud of our equal-opportunity prosecution and conviction.

The goal of winning is not losing two times in a row.

In the most innovative companies there is a significantly higher volume of thank yous than in companies of low innovation.

'No' is always an easier stand than 'Yes.'

Our future will be shaped by the assumptions we make about who we are and what we can be.

The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved.

Leaders is the new organisation do not lack motivational tools, but the tools are different from those of traditional corporate bureaucrats. The new rewards are based not on status but on contribution, and they consist not of regular promotion and automatic pay rises, but of excitement about the mission and a share of the glory of success.

Those enjoying winning streaks thus win twofold. They win not only the game but also the right to greater self-determination. They become masters of their own fate. That feeling of efficacy, of being in charge of circumstances, is the essence of confidence. Winning once or twice is encouraging, but winning continuously is empowering.

Passion for a goal doesn't guarantee success, but without it, you can't even begin.

Confidence is the sweet spot between arrogance and despair-consisting of positive expectations for favorable outcomes.

It's almost impossible to break a losing streak on your own.

Too many people let others stand in their way and don't go back for one more try.

Perpetuating success or sliding into decline is the result of many intersecting forces that reinforce one another directly and indirectly. They are both cause and effect of winning or losing. Winning generates positive forces, losing generates negative forces.

Ambivalence about family responsibilities has a long history in the corporate world.

Leaders must wake people out of inertia. They must get people excited about something they've never seen before, something that does not yet exist.

Corporate men and women, once divided by striking differences in opportunity for career growth, have come to share career chaos.

Confidence is contagious, but so is failure. Even the Yankees will lose if you persuade them that they will.

The very lack of opportunity the group faces creates a self-defeating cycle and puts pressure on members to limit their aspirations.

Winning becomes easier over time as the cornerstones of confidence become habits.

I wonder whether there has been too much emphasis on teaching women to conform, to fit into the system. Certainly that suits conservative organizations in conservative times. But now ... innovation and creativity are necessary.